Contents

Lore

Biography

Lucian wields relic weapons imbued with ancient power and stands a stalwart guardian against the undead. His cold conviction never wavers, even in the face of the maddening horrors he destroys beneath his hail of purifying fire. Lucian walks alone on a grim mission: to purge the spirits of those ensnared in undeath, his eternal beloved among them.

Like the twin relic weapons they wielded, Lucian and his wife Senna were carved from the same stone. Together they battled evil in Runeterra for years, bringing light to darkness and purging those taken by corruption. They were beacons of righteousness: Senna's dedication to their cause never faltered, while Lucian's kindness and warmth touched the hearts of the many lives they saved. Two parts of one whole, they were devoted and inseparable.

Though Lucian and Senna witnessed terror that would break most warriors, nothing they had seen compared to the horrors wrought by the Shadow Isles. When the spectral denizens of that accursed place began to manifest across Runeterra, Lucian and Senna hunted them down wherever they appeared. It was grim work, but the fearless pair prevailed until one tragic encounter with the soul-collector Thresh. Lucian and Senna had faced such nightmarish undead before, but never one so deviously clever and cruel. As the terrible battle unfolded, Thresh sprung an unexpected ploy. To Lucian's horror, the creature tricked Senna and ensnared her soul, trapping her in a spectral prison. Nothing could bring her back. Senna was lost, and for the first time, Lucian faced his mission alone.

Though the Warden had taken half of Lucian's heart, he had also created the Shadow Isles' most dangerous foe. Lucian became a man of dark determination, one who would stop at nothing to purge the undead from the face of Runeterra. In honor of Senna's memory, he took up her fallen weapon and vowed to see their mission through to the end. Now wielding both relic weapons, Lucian fights to slay the undead and cleanse the souls of the Shadow Isles. He knows that Senna's soul is lost, but never loses hope that one day he will bring her peace.

"Be grateful. By slaying you now, I spare you an eternity of torment."

Abilities

Lightslinger

[Passive]

Innate: After using one of Lucian's abilities, his next auto attack within 3 seconds will strike twice. The second shot deals a percentage of Lucian's AD based on level, but fully applies on-hit effects. Minions and monsters take full damage from the second shot. The second shot can critically strike for 75% damage.

Second Shot Damage Ratio: (+50 / 55 / 60% total) (at levels 1/7/13)

Piercing Light

[Q]

Cost: 50 / 60 / 70 / 80 / 90 Mana

Cooldown: 9 / 8 / 7 / 6 / 5 seconds

Range: 500

Area of Effect: 900

Active: Shoots a bolt of piercing light through an enemy unit, damaging enemies in a line for physical damage.

Active: Fires a shot that explodes upon enemy contact or reaching the end of its path. The explosion deals magic damage and marks enemies for 6 seconds.

When Lucian or his allies damage a marked target, Lucian gains Movement Speed for 1 second.

Magic Damage: 85 / 125 / 165 / 205 / 245 (+90%)

Bonus Movement Speed: 60 / 65 / 70 / 75 / 80%

Relentless Pursuit

[E]

Cost: 40 / 30 / 20 / 10 / 0 Mana

Cooldown: 18 / 17 / 16 / 15 / 14 seconds

Range: 425

Active: Quickly dashes a short distance.

Whenever Lightslinger hits an enemy, Relentless Pursuit's cooldown is reduced by 1 second (double to 2 seconds against champions).

The Culling

[R]

Cost: 100 Mana

Cooldown: 110 / 100 / 90 seconds

Range: 1200

Active: Lucian moves freely while firing rapidly in a single direction for 3 seconds. His shots collide with the first enemy they nit and each does physical damage. The Culling does 200% damage to minions.

Lucian may use Relentless Pursuit during The Culling.

Reactivate The Culling to cancel early.

Physical Damage Per Shot: 20 / 35 / 50 (+25% total) (+10%)

Shots Fired: 20 / 25 / 30

Patch History

Lucian is pretty much the premiere bot laner right now: Some of his core items got cheaper and most of his competition got weaker. Plus with Essence Reaver, his late game is stronger, making him one of the best marksmen both in lane and in late game. We're choosing to prioritize keeping that lane strength.

Lucian’s risen to prominence as the go-to midlane bully. We’re increasing the windows of vulnerability he incurs by burning Relentless Pursuit offensively: if Lucian wants to dash into danger, he’ll have to shoot his way back out of it.

Lucian’s been able to spec into a decent amount of survivability (Ninja Tabi, Black Cleaver, and Blade of the Ruined King) without significant damage trade-offs. If the Purifier still wants to give up on Essence Reaver, he needs to be more frugal with his spell usage.

Despite his buffs at the start of the year, Lucian’s been struggling pretty hard. With the prevalence of massive poke damage in bot, Lucian simply can’t get close enough to start the skirmishes he’s meant for. As it so happens, we’ve recently shipped changes to rein in the dominant marksmen and their builds. That being the case, we’re treading carefully: moving Lucian too far up when others are moving down could overshoot the problem. For the time being, we’re smoothing out the flow of his gameplay, fixing up a few spots where Lucian felt a bit slow to respond.

Way back in 2014, we set out to make Lucian the skirmishing-est marksman in League. The Purifier excels at short-range fights through combat mobility and spellweaving, chunking enemies with Lightslinger procs as he darts across the battlefield. As an in-your-face marksman, Lucian needs to put himself in harm’s way more than his compatriots to succeed, but even that level of risk doesn’t justify his current dominance. Lucian’s close-quarters identity falls apart when he can rely on mid-range poke for the brunt of his interaction with enemies. We’re trimming a bit of safety off Lucian’s kit to ensure his success is tied to engaging with - and outmaneuvering - his opponents.

Passive - Lightslinger

BUGFIX : The second shot no longer procs Runaan’s Hurricane or Guinsoo’s Rageblade, since it’s not a basic attack

New season, same problems. Lucian's strengths are numerous - burst damage, sustained damage, mobility, amazing haircut - but he's never had a very well defined weakness. This leads to situations where a popular Lucian shuts out similar champions entirely (like old Graves) and hurts marksman diversity overall, simple because it's too hard to compete with his reliability.

With this change, we're cementing Lucian's weakness explicitly as 'poor damage output from range'. This puts a greater importance on his mobility tools like Ardent Blaze and Relentless Pursuit for contributing to fights and introduces greater risk to the character overall. Lucian still brings a lot to the table, but teams should be able to tailor their strategies to account for (or exploit) his uses, rather than just seeing him as the every-marksman of League.

R - The Culling

RANGE :[1400]⇒ 1200

v5.23Attack damage down. R's scaling shifted to be less early, more late.

Up to a patch or two ago, Lucian was a mid-tier marksman whose identity heavily overlapped with bursty, dash-y dudes like Graves. In this new preseason, Lucian's no longer got that problem but now that he's got a shiny new Essence Reaver to play with, he's back in the challenge space of being a high-skill marksman with a lot of broad strengths. The extra attack damage and rank 1 Culling damage proved to be a little too potent at shutting down the early game, so we're pulling back just a tad (but keeping The Culling relevant throughout the game). Ultimately, Lucian's a cool champion to have around, just as long as he's not the only champion you pick.

FIRE EVERYTHING No longer scales the number of bullets with Attack Speed

SHOTS FIRED Now fires 20/25/30 bullets based on rank

v5.16Passive scales better lategame and does full damage to minions. W costs less, gives more Movement Speed, but has a shorter duration. Lucian's teammates can give him Movement Speed via W's mark.

Sleek and stylish, Lucian’s another ex-pro pick fallen on hard times. Lightslinger’s ‘spell-weaving’ paradigm gives him a unique flair among marksmen, but hinges upon each spell being innately worth casting. Ever since lopping off Ardent Blaze’s AD ratio, the ability’s felt lackluster, so we’re pumping up its utility alongside some tuning to Lucian’s passive to make his ‘attack-cast-attack’ loop feel even more satisfying.

Passive - Lightslinger

SOME JUST NEED A LITTLE HELP : Lightslinger's second shot now always does 100% to minions

v4.21Lucian's got a shorter window to double tap people with Lightslinger, and deals less damage with it at lower levels.

"Lucian is a character that's carefully defined by his low combat range (500) and being opportunistic to succeed within it. These changes are more along the lines of pushing that while creating more windows of opportunity against Lucian. We do say windows of opportunity a lot."

v4.19
'W no longer has an attack damage ratio, but gives more Movement Speed bonuses at later ranks. R's cooldown has been significantly raised (particularly at later levels).

"You know, for a 'short-range' champion, Lucian's got access to a lot of long-range damage once he gets past the early game. Our big focus here is to push Lucian into closer combat range more often by reducing the power on some of his safer spells. At this point you might ask why Q has a 1100 range (well, 500 cast but 1100 total), and that would be a good question. Also, when you consider it, The Culling's 50 second cooldown at rank 3 is pretty crazy. "

W - Ardent Balze

[REMOVED]ATTACK DAMAGE RATIO : 0.3⇒ 0.0

MOVEMENT SPEED BONUS : 40/40/40/40/40⇒ 40/45/50/55/60

R - The Culling

COOLDOWN : 100/75/50 seconds⇒ 110/100/90 seconds

v4.18Occasionally relenting pursuit. This will have been the third time we've made a joke regarding Relentless Pursuit and no apologies will be made at this point in time.

"When we originally re-balanced Lucian back in patch 4.12, we were actually concerned with him being too weak in the laning phase (hah), and so gave him compensatory buffs to keep up. Since then, however, Lucian's gone on to be a premiere lane bully with access to a pretty solid late game as well. These changes should make Lucian think a little more about that aggressiveness in lane."

E - Relentless Pursuit

COST0 Mana ⇒ 40/30/20/10/0 Mana

v4.13Lucian can no longer remove slows with E, and E's cooldown is up across the board

"When we made our big Lucian changes in 4.12, we had three concerns in the back of our heads: the first was that Lucian would struggle too much in the early game to hit his mid to late game power (false!), the second was that players would have difficulty adapting to the new Lucian changes (false!), and the third was that he would be a little too strong in the mid to late game so maybe our concerns didn't matter (true!).

Specifically on these changes: giving Relentless Pursuit a reset interaction with Lightslinger (and making it cost 0 Mana) makes Lucian almost completely immune to slows, which leads to a lot of 'hard counter' situations where he's untouchable for a number of enemy champions. Ultimately we still want Lucian to have tons of mobility after he's picked up some cooldown reduction, but to make it a healthy mechanic he can't also shrug off any attempt to fight back."

v4.12
'Lucian's attack ranges have gone down, but E's cooldown will now get reduced with every hit from Lucian's passive. E also has no Mana cost, so Lucian will be dashing quite a bit in the mid to late game.

"Our design philosophy when approaching a strong champion is to highlight their strengths while also emphasizing their weaknesses (I told you we'd be repeating this a lot). This mostly relates to the concept of meaningful choices, where we want that champ to maintain their strategic value while also having some tradeoff that enemies can play against. Specifically for Lucian, his high generic power (a strong early and late game, high burst, high mobility, etc) meant he could just be blindly picked without much consideration for the enemy team. For a while, this is what made Lucian such a strong competitive pick - he could adapt to any team and could still perform well.

Ultimately our changes are focused on highlighting some of Lucian's strengths as a spell-slinging, mobile marksman, while also emphasizing new weaknesses - like having a lower range. At higher levels with some items (cooldown reduction!!!), Lucian can fluidly chain Es together as long as he has a target to hit with his passive. This also means Lucian will be one of the most mobile mid-range ADCs in teamfights (there are some concerns that he'll be... too mobile thanks to E removing all slows, but we'll keep a close eye here). Having a lower range, however, also means Lucian will need to take more risks in order to get E's cooldown back up, and he might have some tougher matchups during the laning phase (where before he could win almost any lane). This gives us a lot more space to emphasize Lucian's unique traits, and we'll be watching how he performs after these changes."

General

ATTACK RANGE:550 ⇒ 500

BASE MOVEMENT SPEED:330 ⇒ 335

BASE HEALTH:470 ⇒ 500

BASE ATTACK DAMAGE:49 ⇒ 52

Passive - Lightslinger

THE DOUBLE TAP RULE: Fixed a bug where sometimes Lightslinger would fail to kill a champion because it incorrectly predicted that the first shot would be enough and would use the second shot to last hit a minion. Lightslinger will now always follow the double tap rule by shooting a near-dead champion twice to secure the kill.

Q - Piercing Light

NEWFARMCIAN: Piercing Light now deals 75% ⇒ 100% damage to minions

CAST RANGE:550 ⇒ 500

COST:60/65/70/75/80 Mana ⇒ 50/55/60/65/70 Mana

E - Relentless Pursuit

NEWNOW WITH MORE RELENTLESSNESS: Cooldown is now reduced by 1 second per Lightslinger (passive) hit, doubles against enemy champions (2 second reduction per hit, 4 seconds total for a full passive proc)

REMOVEDCULLED: Relentless Pursuit no longer resets on kill during The Culling

v4.11
"We have no change for Lucian this patch but wanted to highlight that he's currently high on our list. Specifically in competitive play, Lucian is crowding out almost all other marksman choices (aside from maybe Kog'Maw) due to his high general strengths and lack of meaningful weaknesses (does this sound familiar?). We're currently very aware of Lucian's dominating performance but want to make sure we get the right changes in to give him said weaknesses!"

General

VERY STRONG:Yes ⇒ Still yes

v4.10
"At higher levels of play, Lucian tends to be a master-of-all-trades marksman with his strong damage in lane, high mobility, decent scaling, and general safety in teamfights. With the new AD itemization changes, however, we don't want to implement bigger modifications with so much in the air. At this point in time we do think Lucian will need some broader changes to give him meaningful weaknesses, but a reduction on W (which was designed for utility as opposed to any form of burst damage) is something we're confident is in line with our potential changes in the future. "

"We're culling some of Lucian's lane dominance – especially when he gets early AD purchases (given Piercing Light's high AD ratios). Rather than relentlessly pursuing a reduction on Lucian's damage, we also shaved some range off Piercing Light, as Lucian was able to poke from just outside of auto-attack range before going in for a strong trade with his passive. I'm sure there's another ability pun to be had in here, but I got nothing."

v3.12Summary: Piercing Light's hitbox width has been reduced slightly, but it now leads its target when cast on an enemy champion. When Lucian kills someone with the first shot of Lightslinger, Lucian will always try to find another target, prioritizing the closest enemy unit to the slain target.

Context: Lucian's Piercing Light can sometimes be sidestepped by its primary target without them even trying to do so. To help the ability land, we've added a leading mechanic to Lucian's Piercing Light. This means that if the target just keeps moving - oblivious to the ability being cast - Lucian is now practically guaranteed to hit. However, the ability will be slightly easier to juke for players who've got their eye out for incoming abilities.

Finally, a bug in Lucian's passive meant that Lightslinger's second shot could sometimes hit a different target! We decided to embrace the bug and properly support it as a feature. Now, if Lucian's target dies before the second Lightslinger round lands, Lucian will always try to find another target, prioritizing the closest enemy unit to the slain target. There are certain filters in place to prevent disrupting Lucian's last hitting or accidentally hitting a champion under the tower.

General

Updated Lucian's recommended items

Base Mana regeneration increased to 7 (from 6)

Mana regeneration gained per level increased to 0.7 (from 0.65)

Lightslinger

When Lightslinger's target dies before the second shot hits, the second shot will now always attempt to find another target

Piercing Light

Laser hit box width reduced to 100 units (from 120)

Piercing Light now leads its target by 80 units when cast on an enemy champion

Tools

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